When change comes through the barrel of a gun, can the gun ever be laid down? It is difficult to imagine that the civil war dividing Nepal will come to an end without more and more bloodshed. A virulent populism - fostered by Maoist indoctrination of villagers to a culture of violent rebellion - can make peaceful compromise appear to be pathetic capitulation. "The People's War" demands that the means to violence be retained. And if the Maoists are to enter into "legitimate" means of national governance, disarmament appears to be a necessary requisite.
King Gyanendra's ill-advised attempt at seizing power on February 1, destroying the nascent elements of democracy in Nepal, provided further justification for the rebel forces and its populist supporters to justify the continued use of force. But that is the price of waging guerilla war; it becomes something much larger and pervasive than those who lead its efforts. Rebellion rallies around a common target - be it the king or the elites; but ultimately as Robespierre demonstrated during the French Revolution, terror can spin utterly out of control once the target of rebellion is apparently vanquished.
And as the French Revolution demonstrates, modern liberal democracies do not necessarily remove violence from their regimes. Particular claims to the use of violence are repressed; violent force and coercion, as Weber reminds us, is the exclusive domain of the sovereign state. And if one subscribes to Hobbes or Schmitt, the creation of the modern state requires violent means, to command the obedience of its citizens and entrench sovereign authority. Is this the fate of Nepal? Or was King Gyanendra - who inherited the thrown from his brother's massacred royal family - the best unifying symbollic sovereign figure, had he not made a futile grab at power? We must remember - however - that the emergence of the British (and somewhat by proxy, Canadian) parliamentary system went through the beheading of Charles I, civil war, the rise of Oliver Cromwell and his merry men, and a restoration of the monarchy as a largely symbollic figure.
The violent origins of what appears - at least to the general public - to be a rather banal institution are often forgotten. The violence that is perceived to protect it, such as wars in foreign lands to fight hostile forces hostile to "our way of life", is deemed legitimate. And from the arrests of potential plots on the Sears tower and the Canadian Parliament, the extension of state authority in protecting the nation-state can occur so subtly and with such stealth, that one will get used to having Big Brother peering over their shoulder - listening in, watching, or checking out their bank records. "That's how they protect us from external threats...defend our way of life...defend our freedom" is the justification. But at what point will the measures employed undermine and destroy any semblance of freedom? And at what point will the innocous veneer of the Great Protector peel away to reveal the bars of the iron cage?
King Gyanendra's ill-advised attempt at seizing power on February 1, destroying the nascent elements of democracy in Nepal, provided further justification for the rebel forces and its populist supporters to justify the continued use of force. But that is the price of waging guerilla war; it becomes something much larger and pervasive than those who lead its efforts. Rebellion rallies around a common target - be it the king or the elites; but ultimately as Robespierre demonstrated during the French Revolution, terror can spin utterly out of control once the target of rebellion is apparently vanquished.
And as the French Revolution demonstrates, modern liberal democracies do not necessarily remove violence from their regimes. Particular claims to the use of violence are repressed; violent force and coercion, as Weber reminds us, is the exclusive domain of the sovereign state. And if one subscribes to Hobbes or Schmitt, the creation of the modern state requires violent means, to command the obedience of its citizens and entrench sovereign authority. Is this the fate of Nepal? Or was King Gyanendra - who inherited the thrown from his brother's massacred royal family - the best unifying symbollic sovereign figure, had he not made a futile grab at power? We must remember - however - that the emergence of the British (and somewhat by proxy, Canadian) parliamentary system went through the beheading of Charles I, civil war, the rise of Oliver Cromwell and his merry men, and a restoration of the monarchy as a largely symbollic figure.
The violent origins of what appears - at least to the general public - to be a rather banal institution are often forgotten. The violence that is perceived to protect it, such as wars in foreign lands to fight hostile forces hostile to "our way of life", is deemed legitimate. And from the arrests of potential plots on the Sears tower and the Canadian Parliament, the extension of state authority in protecting the nation-state can occur so subtly and with such stealth, that one will get used to having Big Brother peering over their shoulder - listening in, watching, or checking out their bank records. "That's how they protect us from external threats...defend our way of life...defend our freedom" is the justification. But at what point will the measures employed undermine and destroy any semblance of freedom? And at what point will the innocous veneer of the Great Protector peel away to reveal the bars of the iron cage?
